


What to Expect When You Don’t Know What You’re Expecting

by anniegee76



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Jane Bennet/Bing Lee (background), Kid!Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:37:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniegee76/pseuds/anniegee76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William Darcy, neurotic first-time father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two Pink Lines

**Author's Note:**

> This story began life as a comment!fic for imaginary circus's wonderful epistolary fic, _Dearest, Loveliest Elizabeth_ , which you should go read now if you haven't already. Unbeta'ed, so please let me know if anything doesn't work for you.

They hadn’t really been trying to get pregnant. They had been married for two years, together for five, and while Mrs. Bennet had begun to drop more and more obvious hints, especially after Jane and Bing’s son was born, they hadn’t been precisely trying to add to their family. But they hadn’t **not** been trying, either. It was still somewhat unexpected when there were two pink lines on the test Lizzie took one morning, but not as unexpected as it might have been. 

William is still surprised, although he knows he shouldn’t be. He buys a copy of _What to Expect When You’re Expecting_ and studies like he hasn’t since his junior year in college. Lizzie mentions, a week after they find out, that the smell of onions is really beginning to trigger her morning sickness. In response, William eradicates onions from their apartment and spends forty weeks feeling uncomfortable even walking down that aisle in the grocery store, even after she gives him the all clear.

For the first six months, every time they sit down to a meal he starts nagging her about whether she's getting enough protein or fresh fruits and vegetables. Or he googles what she's ordered to make sure the ACOG says it's okay for pregnant women to eat. She has horrible morning sickness for a while and all she can keep down is Kraft mac n' cheese, and he frets that she isn't getting a varied enough diet. By about the sixth month Lizzie is sick of it, and she finally hits him with his copy of _What to Expect..._ and reminds him that the OB told them that as long as she took her pre-natal it didn't matter right now if her diet was kind of limited.

It's not that he doesn't believe the OB, or he doesn't trust that Lizzie can handle the pregnancy. But there are still times when he wakes up in the middle of the night and goes into the still-empty nursery and sits in the glider and looks at the crib with the bedding Jane picked out. And he promises the baby that he will always be there, that he will teach her-- because they have found out that they are expecting a girl, which alternately thrills and terrifies him-- to throw a ball and drive a car. But he remembers the phone call he got his junior year in college, and his own father’s funeral, and he's just really afraid that he won't be able to stay, he won't be able to keep Lizzie and the baby safe and watch over them.

It's at this point that Lizzie finds him and drags him back to bed, promises him that she and the baby will still be there in the morning, and tells him if he's really that worried he can call the lawyer and revise the trust agreement, but she has never for a second doubted that he would be there and she doesn't intend to start at three in the morning. As he curls up around her and her increasingly unwieldy stomach, the baby wakes up, and she grabs his hand and guides it to where the baby is kicking. He falls asleep like that.

When he wakes up the next morning, Lizzie is still sleeping. He sits up and his heart gives a dull thump, like it still does sometimes, when he sees her there in his bed and realizes she is his now. He squeezes her hand and she stirs and opens her eyes. "I know you're scared," she says. "So am I, a little bit. But you're going to be such a good dad," she smiles blearily at him. Her confidence is enough to carry them both, at least for a little while longer.


	2. Paternity Leave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter proved unexpectedly difficult to write, so apologies for the delay. Unbeta'd, so let me know of any errors.

Pemberley Digital has a number of generous benefits, but among its most generous—and least utilized, William discovers—is the parental leave policy. Not the maternity leave; there have been any number of women he has seen leave after the apparently-obligatory shower with cake and gifts in the office, to return 4 months later with baby pictures and bags under their eyes. But the six weeks of primary caregiver leave Pemberley offers, an (unfortunately unpaid) incentive for non-birth parents to spend time with their infants after the birth parent has returned to work. When he suggests to Mrs. Reynolds that he would like to take that time after Lizzie goes back to work, she has to call HR to help navigate the paperwork required. The VP who HR sends over admits that she has never actually seen a man make use of the leave.

During the meeting William wonders aloud how best to encourage his employees to take their leave—what good is a policy that’s on the books if nobody uses it?—and asks the HR VP to look into it for him. His half-thought-out request gives the HR VP a number of late nights, but she ends up concluding (and pointing out, in an email to Mrs. Reynolds), that the example of William himself taking the leave is going to be the best incentive he could possibly come up with.

But that’s how William finds himself changing his 12-week-old daughter’s outfit for the third time one gray Tuesday morning in March.

“You, my dear, are entirely too efficient at digesting your breakfast,” he says, as he fastens the tabs on her diaper and pulls down her new onesie. Elinor kicks her feet in response. He is trying to match the snaps on her pajamas to their appropriate tabs when his phone alarm goes off. He reaches over to where it is perched on the changing table next to Elinor to tap it quiet.

“Oh look, Elinor, it’s time for your next bottle!” His enthusiasm sounds forced, even to his ears, although the little wiggle Elinor gives suggests she may like it. He can’t tell. All the books say you should talk to your child, that it’s important for development for them to hear some absurdly large number of words in their first year of life. William—who Lizzie still teases for his long silences--finds carrying on a one-sided conversation with a partner who still has trouble focusing her eyes on him to be difficult. But the books say it is important so he keeps trying.

He scoops her up from the changing table and deposits her in the bouncy seat in the kitchen while he pulls the bottle of pumped milk out of the fridge. Lizzie had rolled her eyes at the effusive note Ricky Collins had attached with the bottle warmer, but William has to admit that it’s much easier to use it than to fuss around with the microwave or, god forbid, the stove.

“What should we do today, Elinor?” he asks her gravely once he has popped the warmed bottle into her mouth. He taps his iPhone awake with his free hand to enter the bottle into the baby care tracking app he has downloaded. “It is due to rain later, so I suppose if we are to venture outside this apartment at all today we should go soon. Your mother has said that it is important to get fresh air every day.”

(It still staggers him, a little bit, to think of Lizzie—his Lizzie, bright-eyed Lizzie who teases him and laughs with him, who still growls “Darcy” at him when he has angered her—as somebody’s mother. Fitz would call it a mindfuck. William doesn’t much use profanity, even in the confines of his own head, but it is a mindfuck.)

He holds the bottle up against the light to see how much she has left. “Perhaps after you have finished your breakfast we shall walk to the coffee shop.”

(It staggers him even more to think of himself as somebody’s father.)

* * *

The small coffee shop down the street from their apartment is renowned in San Francisco for its baked goods. It is not very populous at 10:30 in the morning, well after the morning rush but before the locals have started drifting in for lunchtime. William decides to treat himself to a sticky bun as well as his regular coffee order; he also has them box up a cupcake for Lizzie when she returns home from work.

“How old, man?” asks the barista working the cash register, nodding towards Elinor, who is strapped to William’s chest in the Baby Bjorn.

“Twelve weeks, 2 days,” he responds, dropping his change into the tip jar.

“Cute. We have high chairs over in the corner if you want.”

“Thank you, but she cannot sit unsupported yet…,” and he realizes the flaw in wearing her out in the Bjorn rather than taking the stroller: there is nowhere to put Elinor down while he eats. His coffee is already in a ceramic mug, his sticky bun on a plate rather than boxed up with the cupcake, and he was actually looking forward to spending some time outside the apartment before the rain.

Well, he’ll just have to work around it. He pulls the chair well out from the table to leave room for Elinor in her Bjorn and sits down. He has chosen a window seat and spends the length of time it takes him to drink his coffee and eat his sticky bun pointing out the passers-by to Elinor. He cannot tell from his angle whether she is following his pointing finger, but she kicks her feet occasionally so he chooses to believe she is enjoying his narrative.

“And that lady is walking what appears to be a cockapoo. Why it’s necessary to give a fancy name to what we would have called a mutt when I was a child I will never know,” he concludes, taking the last bite of his sticky bun. He glances down at Elinor and realizes that one of the pecans from the bun, generously coated in frosting, has fallen onto Elinor’s nearly-bald head.

He wipes it off with a napkin, which just smears the frosting further into the wisps of Elinor’s hair. He rubs more forcefully, until Elinor begins to squawk in protest; pulling the napkin away he realizes that bits of paper have adhered to the sticky frosting and now adorn his daughter’s head.

He can’t believe it. It’s only the second day of his leave and he’s already failed at such basic parental tasks at keeping his child clean.

“Well,” he says, half to her head and half to himself. “I guess a bath is now on today’s agenda.”

* * *

He manages to get her home before the rain that has been threatening all day starts. As he waits for the elevator, Mrs. Allan from the 7th floor is passing through the lobby, on her way to go grocery shopping. He gives her a half-wave that he hopes conveys that he is happy to see her but is in a hurry to get Elinor up to the apartment, Mrs. Allan being the kind of garrulous older woman who leaves him tongue-tied and awkward-feeling.

No such luck. She makes a beeline over to him, shaking her head and practically clucking her tongue.

“That baby should be wearing a hat, young man.”

He has a hat for Elinor, crumpled in the bottom of the diaper bag Lizzie had chosen and carefully packed. Elinor had worn it on the way to the coffee shop, but he hadn’t wanted to put it on her sticky head for the short walk home. The elevator door dings open and he flees onto it, rather than try to explain his logic.

* * *

By the time the elevator opens onto his floor, Elinor is beginning to fuss. He hurries to unlock the apartment door and lay her down in her crib. He turns her mobile on and crosses the hallway to the bathroom to pull out the blue baby bathtub, trying to ignore the worried feeling which had only grown stronger after Mrs. Allan’s scolding.

He has seen Lizzie bathe Elinor plenty of times, and even passed her towels once or twice. But he has never been the one handling her slippery baby body, never been the one in charge of making sure she does not slip under the water and drown, or bash her delicate skull on the hard bath tiles.

It is not cowardice, precisely, he tells himself. It is just that Lizzie was the one who had spent her high school years baby-sitting, so it made sense at the time to let Lizzie take the lead.

It doesn’t make sense now. He watches the water rush into the tub and tries to slow his breathing and plan his approach to the bathing problem. Elinor’s chatter to her mobile in the nursery has become higher-pitched and more fretful, but it will do no good to fetch her before the tub is full. And he cannot quiet her until he is calm himself.

From the nursery she gives a loud squeal and then begins to cry in earnest. He bolts in from the bathroom floor to find her wailing at the mobile, which has stopped turning above her.

“Come here Elinor,” he tries in his best soothing murmur, as he picks her up. She promptly spits up what appear to be the entire contents of her stomach all over his shirt.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he can’t help saying.

Well. There’s another word towards her total, though not one he intended to say in front of her just yet. Or ever.

He puts her down in the crib again to strip off his now-dirty Henley, which he tosses in the direction of the laundry. She starts crying again, her face going red as he denudes her of her pajamas, onesie, and diaper.

“Let’s try this again,” he says, taking a deep breath before he picks her up again. Her cries grow less desperate when she is in his arms, which surprises him.

He carries her to the bathroom and slips her into the tub. She kicks her legs, sending the warm water splashing, and waves her arms.

She makes a strange kind of gurgle that he hasn’t heard her make before, and he peers at her closely. Is she choking? Can she breathe? She kicks her feet and gurgles again and he realizes that she is laughing.

He has never heard her laugh before.

“You like that, baby girl?” He sits back on his heels next to the tub, reaches his hand out to stir the water over her belly. She laughs again, a surprisingly deep belly laugh. He can feel the goofy smile contorting his face in response.

Gently, oh so gently, he rinses the sticky frosting and bits of paper napkin out of her hair, carefully protecting her eyes with his hand (he discovers that his hand is big enough to cover her entire face). He washes her back, her belly, her arms, her legs, her tiny fingers and toes.

When she is clean he lifts her out and wraps her in a towel, carries her into the nursery, and lays her on the changing table to pat her dry and put on a clean diaper and pajamas. He is afraid she will be cold, so he scoops her up quickly, and holds her close so his body heat can warm her.

She snuffles and rubs her face against his chest. He drops into the glider next to the crib, resting an arm underneath her bottom to support her; she curls her legs up and burrows into his bare chest.

The rain beats against the windows, and he feels his eyelids begin to droop as three months of accumulated sleep debt catch up with him. She yawns as he reaches behind him to pull down the blanket Charlotte sent from the back of the glider and wraps it around them both.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. She mewls in protest when he jostles her as he fumbles it out to look at it. It is time for her next bottle. He looks at the alert on his phone and back to his sleeping daughter, and taps his phone to dismiss the alert. She will wake up when she is hungry. He leans back in the glider and closes his eyes, listening to the rain and feeling her like a sun-warmed stone against his chest.

* * *

Lizzie comes home at 5:30 to find him chopping vegetables in the kitchen, Elinor perched on the kitchen island in her bouncy seat in defiance of all the manufacturer’s recommendations.

“Soooooo-- how did your day go?” she asks, toeing off her heels and leaning over to kiss Elinor’s head.

“It went well,” he gravely responds. “We went to the coffee shop and got you a cupcake.”

“William,” she whines. “I will never get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes if you keep--”

“What? Procuring food I know you enjoy?” He puts down the knife and pulls her to him. “I think you look great,” he breathes in her ear.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, mister,” she laughs at him, untangling herself from his clinging arms. “But right now I want to see my little girl,” she reaches over to unsnap Elinor. “Were you good for daddy today?”

He goes back to chopping vegetables. “Very good. I gave her a bath.”

“You did?” She coos, mostly to the baby. “Are you a clean baby girl? Did your daddy take good care of you? Did he?” Lizzie lifts Elinor up toward the ceiling before pulling her close, eliciting a wide, gummy smile. “Yes, he did!"

He smiles at them, and something tight and uncertain unwinds in his chest. As he watches Lizzie dance their baby around their kitchen, he begins to believe it.


End file.
